


Snake Charmer

by Bluandorange



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Animal Transformation, Body Dysphoria, Body Horror, Friends to Lovers, Hanzo goes Naga, M/M, Mccree is a Scalie, Naga, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-27
Updated: 2018-03-27
Packaged: 2019-04-13 15:21:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14115225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bluandorange/pseuds/Bluandorange
Summary: The security footage does not answer anything, not really. They watch it again, and again. Athena has already isolated the second the change begins and when it ends. The window of activity is surprisingly small. Only a handful of minutes. Hanzo is shown to have slept through it entirely, and had continued to sleep for many hours after.“I jus’ don’t get it,” says Agent Lucio, rewinding and replaying it from the beginning for the countless time. “How can someone jus’ sleep through their legs fusing together and their skin sprouting scales?”





	Snake Charmer

**Author's Note:**

> Heavy warnings for body horror this chapter and vomiting at the end

Hanzo wakes slowly. His feet are cold. He tries to shift them back under the blankets, but the movement is clumsy and he can’t seem to find the blanket’s edge. He gives up with an indignant huff and turns over. 

Then, the realization; he took his feet off last night. 

He pushes himself up onto his arms, not yet worried, just sleepily confused that his phantom feet have suddenly added ‘cold’ to their pains. His eyes catch at the end of the bed and he goes still.

There’s a dark, heavy mass where his knees should be, and it continues on, and on, on and on, down to the floor. 

Before Hanzo can convince himself not to, he flicks his foot. The mass moves, thumping lightly at the side of the bed frame.

_“Agent Shimada.”_

Hanzo jerks, unable to stifle the startled noise that slips out. He shouldn’t be afraid–-he knows the voice. Athena. “Y-Yes,” he says, voice shaking. 

_“Requesting permission to alert the medical staff of your status.”_

Hanzo’s eyes flick to the mass where his legs should be, and away. 

“Yes. Granted.”

\---

They take him to the med bay on a gurney, his new…limb bundled into a haphazard coil around his waist. There’s so much of it, a long, thick cord of muscle and  _scales,_ quickly and smartly hidden by Doctor Ziegler, who strips the blanket from Hanzo’s bed and covers him. Agent Lucio has to keep adjusting both it and the limb as they travel. Between Hanzo’s growing anxiety and the unfamiliar, sometimes erratic movements it sparks, the limb keeps slipping free. Agent Lucio catches it gracefully and guides it back into place. 

Hanzo can feel the heat of his hands, almost as if they were touching his own skin. But they can’t be. They simply can’t.

They arrive in medical; the blanket is stripped away. Underneath, blue and gold scales, brilliant and impossible, stopping just below his navel. His legs are gone. His legs are  _gone_ , replaced by what can only be a serpent's tail. 

Doctor Ziegler murmurs a curse under her breath. Agent Lucio presses both palms to his hairline and replies with a curse of his own. Zenyatta comes forward and passes one of his orbs to Hanzo, saying “If you must focus on anything, focus here, my friend.” 

Hanzo works the orb between his palms as they begin their tests. 

Measurements, X-rays, tissue samples. 

“Can you feel this?”

“Yes.” 

“How about now?”

“Yes.”

The limb is his. The tests are conclusive in this regard. It is fully attached to him, it is functional, it is, to the best of their knowledge, healthy. 

His legs are entirely gone. There aren’t even fragments left in the meat, according to the X-rays. The change begins at his hips, approximately where the scales on the outside stop just above his pelvis. Above that line, he is the same man he was yesterday, unchanged. 

They cannot determine if the change will continue to spread. 

They cannot determine what caused the change in the first place. 

Doctor Zielger requests to review the security footage of Hanzo’s bedroom, “with your permission, of course.” 

Hanzo consents. He also takes note of the camera placement within the footage, though he’s fairly certain he won’t act on the knowledge any time soon. No point. 

The security footage does not answer anything, not really. They watch it again, and again. Athena has already isolated the second the change begins and when it ends. The window of activity is surprisingly small. Only a handful of minutes. Hanzo is shown to have slept through it entirely, and had continued to sleep for many hours after.

“I jus’ don’t get it,” says Agent Lucio, rewinding and replaying it from the beginning for the countless time. “How can someone jus’ _sleep_ through their legs fusing together and their skin sprouting _s_ cales?”

Hanzo doesn’t answer because he doesn’t  _know_. He rolls Zenyatta’s orb from hand to the other, trying to focus on its warmth. He can’t, because his legs are too damn cold. 

\---

They send for his brother. 

Zenyatta suggests it; Hanzo nods his consent.

Doctor Zielger waits outside the room for Genji, to brief him in private before showing him in. Agent Lucio and Captain Amari both leave, one to make breakfast and the other to make coffee, neither likely to return before his brother’s arrival. 

Hanzo can feel their footsteps through the floor, through the belly of the tail he should not have. Even his brother’s, light though they are, followed soon by his voice Hanzo can just barely hear through the door. Genji and the doctor speak quietly, but Hanzo is straining to hear every word. 

“–-we don’t know.” 

“--be alright?”

“Yes, yes, but–-. –-not sure–-reversible. Not yet.”

‘Not sure if it is reversible.’

No, how could they be? It just happened. It just  _happened_ , while he was  _asleep_ , no way to stop it, no way to prepare. It happened, and its over, and he’s  _like this_  now, possibly permanently. 

 _Permanently_. 

TapTap–-fingertips, snapping against his cheek, not hard but insistent. 

“Hey.”

Hanzo blinks, eyes focusing and finding Genji before him, face bare and eyes wide with concern. “You in there?” his brother asks.

Hanzo hadn’t–-he’d been–-when had-–

Hanzo nods. Swallows, suddenly aware of his dry tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth.

Genji bullies his way onto Hanzo’s hospital bed. Hands him a small plastic cup of water. Tells him about the dream he was having before he got the comm to come here, how it involved that one girl, you remember the one, she used to work at the flower shop, had the pink hair and pigtails, wore Lolita on weekends with those big-ass platform shoes. 

Genji nudges him until Hanzo works his tongue free enough to reply with the girl’s name. It comes out in a fumble of syllables. Genji says, “You sound terrible, drink,” and nudges him again. Hanzo throws back the water, immediately feels his stomach rebel. Even the nausea feels different, now. Lower. They had shown him his new bone structure but not his organs. Where are all his organs?

Cold metal closes around his foot and Hanzo jerks, surprised. Genji makes an amused sound, suddenly bending down toward the floor to–-to wrestle the wiggling end of Hanzo’s tail into his lap. 

“Wha–-stop,” Hanzo croaks, his hand reaching for Genji’s arm, landing on and gripping his rebuilt bicep but nothing more. His upper half is still his own, but he feels like he’s moving through fog, not drunk, no, something worse. A frightening disconnect between his wants and his actions, intention fraying away to nothing across the distance of mind to body. 

“Just let me see,” says Genji. “I’m not hurting you, am I?” When Hanzo doesn’t immediately respond with a ‘yes’, Genji seems to take it as permission to continue. He tries to turn the heavy, squirming thing in his hands over to see its golden belly. It fights him the whole way. “Are you doing this?” he asks, a thread of amusement in his voice. Hanzo, despite feeling Genji's hands, a sensation comparable to having them tickle at the soles of his feet, shakes his head. “It’s part of you–-” Genji argues, “-–you have to be. Relax. I’m just checking-–the picture says it should be somewhere near here.” 

“What,” asks Hanzo. 

“Your dick probably moved down here, I think.” 

Hanzo does shove him now, smacking at his hands until he drops the end of the tail, letting it fall back to the floor with a heavy smack. It immediately disappears under the bed, tucked away where annoying little brothers can’t grab at it so easily. Genji grins. 

“What? I’m trying to help-–you’ll need to use the bathroom eventually, you should know where it went to.” 

“I do not need to use it  _yet_ ,” Hanzo replies, not quite managing his usual steel, but something closer. Something further away from the lost and broken tone he had minutes before.   
  
Genji makes a considering noise, a hum that’s mostly mechanical, head tilted to look down at the winding mass below his feet. It shuffles back, hiding, and Hanzo must be doing it, but he isn’t sure how. He knows when he hits the machine on the other side of the bed because he feels it in the same instant the instruments behind him rattle. He jerks his foot-–his tail?-–away from it, feels himself catch on and fall over more of himself. He’s afraid to look, but Genji seems enthralled. 

“You can feel all of that?” asks Genji. 

“Yes.”

“What’s it like?”

“It…my feet, but…not.” 

“Are they ticklish?” Genji sits up enough to shoot him a smirk; a known weakness he used to exploit when they were young.

“No,” Hanzo lies. 

“They seem jumpy enough to be. Stop hiding it all under the bed, I want to see how much there is.”

 _Too much_ , Hanzo thinks.

Still, he does as asked, lifting his legs and pointing his toes, or so he imagines, the snake mass spooling out one heavy inch at a time, lifted into the air until the bed creaks and shifts dangerously from the weight and Hanzo drops all of it back onto the floor. 

Genji gives a startled laugh, a high and giddy wheeze of a sound, and says “and that’s, what, half? You almost broke the bed.”

“I don’t want to do this, Genji,” Hanzo says. He doesn’t know why, but its true, and he knows its true the moment its out of his mouth. “I want…” to wake up. To pretend this never happened. To start the day over in his bed and all of this to have been a bad dream. “I don’t want this,” he finishes. He struggles to catch his breath.

“I know,” Genji says. His hand starts rubbing into Hanzo’s back and that, at least, has become familiar. “Breathe, alright? Breathe.” Hanzo listens, closes his eyes, and takes a slow, deep breath. 

“It’s almost six,” Genji continues, and his voice has changed, become the steady and sure cadence he’s acquired under Zenyatta’s teachings, or maybe even before. A tone Hanzo is still learning to recognize as his brother’s. “We would be meeting for meditation in an hour, but I think we should move it ahead in the schedule.” Hanzo nods in agreement.

Zenyatta instructs Hanzo to drink another cup of water before he leads both Shimadas in meditation. Hanzo forces himself into it deeply, seeking escape. 

His feet are too cold. 

He remembers he does not have feet anymore. 

He begins to spiral, catches himself on Zenyatta’s calm, steady words and tries again to turn his mind toward nothingness.

His feet are too cold. 

This cycle repeats for the next hour. 

When they are finished, Agent Lucio returns and bullies Hanzo into eating a small bowl of rice. When he’s finished, Doctor Ziegler asks to speak with Hanzo alone. Genji gives him a pat on the shoulder and leaves.

The next twenty minutes are spent discussing Hanzo’s future bathroom visit as clinically as possible. Having had food and water in the last hour, it is an inevitability he is forced to face. His anatomy has changed. At least Genji was wrong about the placement. 

Hanzo’s genitals, while no longer human, are at least still housed in the same general area as before. Or so the doctor assumes, indicating the crease of the ‘anal scale’ just below his pelvis. Hanzo is shown a diagram of what is likely hidden beneath the scale and then is assured that, if he chooses, he is free to discover all of that for himself in the privacy of the nearby clinic bathroom. The doctor can do a full examination of it at a later time. 

Hanzo agrees that would be best. 

Doctor Ziegler helps him to the bathroom. He knocks over several things on the way there, all of them behind him and out of his sight. He focuses on getting to the bathroom. He can feel the impression of every impact lingering on the unfamiliar expanse of his tail even after the door is closed and he is alone. 

He is alone. 

He is alone and he is expected to look.

He doesn’t want to. 

He doesn’t even want to touch that part of himself.

After a few measured breaths, Hanzo forces himself to turn and take in his reflection. It is, at first glance, entirely recognizable. Which is a relief. 

He looks like warmed over dog shit. This is to be expected. Hanzo drags his fingers through his hair, trying to school it back from his forehead, into a more manageable pile away from his face. His fingers stick on tangles. He wastes several minutes combing them loose. A reprieve. 

His feet are cold. He no longer has feet. 

He has a fucking ‘anal scale’, though, and he’s supposed to be inspecting _that._

Setting his jaw, Hanzo shifts up, imagining lifting his heels and placing his weight on the balls of his feet. He watches his reflection. Instead of pubic hair, scales come into view, starting just below his navel. In the bathroom’s florescents, they are more yellow than gold, just a few hues off from his natural skin tone. Along his sides, the scales transition to a striking blue. 

Rising higher still, he can see the crease, sitting horizontally across his pelvis. Where his penis  _should_  be, but isn’t. Below the crease are two distinct mounds, forming an upright V, meeting the crease at each corner. If the diagram was any indication, those are likely his new…penis _es_. Because snakes, of course, have two. 

Hanzo closes his eyes. 

He can do this. He has to do this. 

He tries feeling the crease with his eyes closed, but that is somehow worse. The clashing sensations of something alien against his palm and the unmistakable feeling of his palm against  _him_  makes panic rise in his throat. He opens his eyes, sees his hand there, under the rise of his belly, and he breathes. 

He can’t see the scales like this, his hand is in the way. His mind believes that yes, that’s him. His nerves settle, just for a moment. 

He moves his palm down another inch. Feels the crease there, knows from the diagram that it should open much like a hinge. He sets his palm below it, applies pressure as he shifts his hips, creating a counter balance–

There isn’t a sound to it, which might make it worse. He watches himself  _split_ , revealing a pocket of pink, moist tissue, can feel the instant it’s exposed to the cold, open air. Can see it twitch and shiver.

Hanzo buckles forward and begins to dry-heave. The rice comes back up and into the sink. 

**Author's Note:**

> “blu why we gotta do this why do we gotta read hanzo being grossed out by his snake junk”
> 
> cuz eventually McCree is gonna touch it >8C and they’re both gonna like it >8C and it’s gonna be FINE >8CCC


End file.
